Inventive concepts relate to an image sensor, and more particularly, to an image sensor that may reduce noise during digital zooming and may reduce power consumption.
An image sensor may convert a light signal including image information of an object to an electrical signal. Widely used image sensors include a charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensor and a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor. With the development of the computer industry and the telecommunications industry, demand has increased for image sensors with improved performance in various electronic devices, such as digital cameras, camcorders, personal communication systems (PCS), game devices, security cameras, medical micro-cameras, and/or mobile phones.
In order to enlarge an image for an image sensor, optical zooming, which enlarges an image by adjusting a distance between lenses, and digital zooming, which enlarges an image by cutting out a portion of the image during shooting, may be used. In digital zooming, a new pixel value is interpolated using an existing image value when a zoom function is performed, and as a result of these characteristics, digital zooming shows a less delicate image than that shown by the optical zooming. Therefore, various studies are being conducted to reduce deterioration of an image during digital zooming.